Who is Walt Disney?

It many ways, it is not Walt Disney who is our hero, but the characters and animation that he and his early team created. Disney the creator continues to live every time Bambi or Snow White is re-released and another generation enjoys what the man created.

He is our hero because he left us with a legacy that can be enjoyed time and again, because he knew how to entertain us so well, and because he developed a process for creating animated films that survives even now. We marvel at his creativity, and we are thrilled every time we go to an amusement park that bears his name.

What made him the Animator?

The name Disney has become synonymous with innovative, family-oriented work in a variety of media-animation, live action films, television and theme parks.

Disney, a descendant of Irish immigrants, was born on December 5,1901, in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Elias Disney, worked several jobs in Chicago and was one of the army of workers who constructed the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.

The family left Chicago in 1906 for Marceline, Missouri. It was here that Disney developed his love for drawing. After his father was stricken with typhoid fever in 1909, the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri. Disney attended public school and also enrolled in weekend classes at the Kansas City Art Institute. Art school did not suit Disney; he spent more time doodling than listening to the lessons.

The family returned to Chicago and Disney attended McKinley High School as well as taking night courses at the Art Institute of Chicago. He dropped out of high school to join the Army and fight in World War I. He was rejected for the Army, but later joined the Red Cross Ambulance Corps. He never saw any combat. He was discharged from the Army in 1919 and returned to the United States.

His father would not support Disney in his dream of becoming an artist, so he struck out on his own and moved back to Kansas City. He worked on newspaper ads and tried to start his own art business, called Iwerks-Disney (Ub Iwerks was a good friend and fellow artist). The venture failed, and Disney ended up working at a company called Kansas City Film Ad-creating crude animated ads for local movie theaters. This is where Disney began expanding his horizons as an animator and experimenting with new techniques.

After a couple of years, he started another company, Laugh-O-Gram Films, Inc., producing short cartoons based on fairy tales and popular children’s stories. Disney’s innovation was to give the old material a modern spin. He employed animators who would go on to become great successes in Hollywood: his friend Iwerks, as well as Hugh Harman, Rudolph Ising, Carmen Maxwell and Friz Freleng, When Laugh-O-Gram went under he took a copy oi Alice in Wonderland, a mixture of animation and live action, to California to try his luck in Hollywood.

A New York distributor saw his Alice in Wonderland and wanted to set up a deal for more live action/animated films. Disney recruited his brother, Roy, to help with the business side of his studio. The partnership would last until Disney’s death. Another employee, Lillian Bounds, caught Disney’s eye and the two were married in 1925.

Disney began working with distributor Charles B. Mintz on the popular Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series. After Mintz refused to raise the fees for Disney’s work on Oswald, Disney had to find a new character.

“No matter whether it was Disney or Iwerks who came up with the idea, it was Iwerks who directed the first films with a new character called Mortimer, later to be renamed Mickey Mouse by Disney’s wife.”

The Mickey Mouse silent cartoons could not find a distributor, but Disney reinvented animation by creating Steamboat Willie, the first sound animated cartoon (Disney did the vocal effects and provided the voice of Mickey until 1947). The cartoon was a smash hit.

In 1932, Disney created the Silly Symphonies series of animated all-music shorts. The first color Silly Symphony won the first Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. Disney also received a special Academy Award in 1932 for his creation of Mickey Mouse. The series would soon spin off such immortal characters as Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto and Minnie Mouse.

But, Disney had bigger ambitions. In 1934, he began plans for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first animated feature. The rest of Hollywood deemed it Disney’s folly, but the end result was a triumph. Audiences flocked to the movie, and it was the highest-grossing film of 1938.

Unfortunately, later animated features such as Pinocchio and Fantasia were box office disappointments. Disney kept his head above water with a series of films that packaged together existing shorts, and resumed work on Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. The studio also started a series of nature films called True-Life Adventures.

On a trip to Chicago in the late 1940s, Disney began making drawings of his dream theme park as a way to pass the time. He would end up spending 5 years of his life developing the concept and finding suitable land to build on in Anaheim, California. He also insisted the park be surrounded by a railroad. Disneyland opened in 1955 and was an immediate success.

While still creating full-length and short animated classics, Disney Studios now started making more and more live-action films such as 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, The Parent Trap and The Shaggy Dog. The live-action films would reach their height with the 1964 production of Mary Poppins.

Disney then turned his attention to the rapidly growing medium of television. He created the daytime children’s series The Mickey Mouse Club, and a weekly show called Disneyland evolved into Walt Disney Presents, Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color and The Wonderful World of Disney.

Disney was now working on his grandest venture ever, The Florida Project. Disney had purchased large amounts of land near Orlando and envisioned a vastly expanded Magic Kingdom with adjacent hotels and resorts. The most compelling idea was to create a futuristic city from the ground up that was to be called the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT).

Sadly, Disney would never see his dream fulfilled. He died of lung cancer in 1966. Roy Disney, who took over the Disney Empire, insisted the Florida Park be named Walt Disney World in honor of his late brother.

The Legacy of Walt Disney

Walt Disney created an entertainment empire that, during its height, has not seen its equal. Disney was not a skilled artist, but he recognized talent in others. He had big dreams and was not afraid to fulfill them.

Disney was a hero with an edge. He was notoriously stubborn and hard to please and was always surrounded by a corps of yes-men who would carry out any order that their boss flung out.

Disney was also fiercely anti-labor, due, in part, to an animators’ strike that crippled the production oi Dumbo. He never forgave those he thought were traitors to him. He testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 that some of his animators were communist agitators. He also spied for the FBI on union activity in Hollywood and engaged in illegal intimidation of labor organizers.

However, he also engaged in his philanthropic efforts, including one of his most enduring legacies, the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), which is still sustained by Disney money. In such projects can be found evidence of a man interested in more than just business and animation.

While Disney was undoubtedly proud of the art of his animation, of the amazing technology of his theme parks and of his innovative use of television, he most likely would have wanted to be remembered for what he was: one of the greatest entertainment figures in American history.

Courtesy

Most of Disney’s animated and live-action films are available on VHS and DVD. There have been dozens of books published about his career, his art and the theme parks. You can find a variety of information on the man and his work at www.disney.go.com.

You can read more about Walt Disney in Walt Disney: An American Original, Disney Editions, 1994; Inside the Dream: The Personal Story of Walt Disney, Disney Editions, 2001; Art of Walt Disney, Harry N. Abrams, 1999; and Walt Disney: Conversations, University Press of Mississippi, 2006.